Category: Technology & Startups

Facebook to Sell Out?

Posted on by theFerf

Something about this just seems wrong. Somehow Facebook has the reputation (at least to me) as being this untouchable private community. The idea of an aquisition of such a private community is mind blowing in 2 ways:

1. The Bad: you only have an audience of 18-23 year olds
2. THE GOOD: you only have an audience of 18-23 year olds!

Business Week is reporting that Facebook has turned down a $750 million acquisition offer and is looking for $2 billion. The blogosphere is buzzing about the news.

The source of the information is an executive(s) at Facebook, which as a private company is fairly free to say just about whatever it likes with regard to acquisitions. And what they are doing is clearly playing Business Week to get the word out that they are very much for sale.

TechCrunch » Facebook is doing the Skype dance

Selling My Car on eBay Motors: 2000 Honda CR-V

Posted on by theFerf

Interested in a 2000 Honda CRV? Then you are in luck. Check out mine for sale now at ebay! Maybe this will get picked up by Edgeio too for sale.

2000 Honda CR-V

We bought this 2000 Honda CRV in 2002 and have absolutely loved it ever since. We are the kind of people that like to get out and enjoy life, and this SUV has given us the ability to get there with all of our stuff! I was amazed at the capacity of this vehicle with the fold down seats and the roof rack.

This is the 4th Honda we have owned (2 other civics and a Honda Motorcycle previously) and we would buy nothing else but Hondas. Hondas are built to last without a doubt. We sold our first civic with 240,000 miles on it and it was still running like a dream, so this one should have plenty of miles left on it. So lets get down to the details…

This car has ONLY been serviced at the Honda Dealerships with Genuine Honda Parts. It has been in a small fender bender (someone bumped into the door) but was repaired promptly at the Honda Repar Center and is in perfect working order. This car has always been owned by NON smokers and has always had all of its maintenance work performed on schedule including the 90k mile tune-up, new tires, frequent oil changes and lots of TLC.

The CRV runs very well and is very comfortable for everyone to ride in. The interior fits 5 adults and has plenty of cupholders, armrests and storage for all of them. The CRV is very versatile on the inside with dual folding rear seats, a rear accessory charger, a built in picnic table and cooler in the back for tailgating, tie down straps and a few small compartments to keep things from rolling around. This car, like all Hondas, gets really good gas mileage and is a great highway vehicle. It is built on a civic chassis so it is very easy to maneuver, park and has a great turning radius.

We have had no issues with this car but must unfortunately get rid of it. We have recently moved to California leaving our home and cars behind. We have no need for cars with public transportation so we must sell them all. The reserve is set at $7500 because that is what we need to pay off the loan.

BONUS! We will be throwing in our Yakima roof rack/cage (shown) for gear and 2 Yakima bike racks (not shown) with locks with the CRV. We have used it to get our bikes all over the place but have no need for them after CRV is gone. Paid over $600 for it a few years ago, free for you!

See the Ebay Auction Right Here.

The Nature of Social Networks and its Participants

Posted on by theFerf

The nature of why social networks work is an interesting beast and Im always excited to join in conversations regarding them. My experience with 95% of these networks is that they do not maintain my interest past a day or two even if I am REALLY trying to pay attention.

So what makes a them sticky and what keeps the users coming back? Maybe it is possible I just havent found MY social network yet. According to an article I read today (from the leader of the Yahoo! Technology Dev Group), 1% of any given group starts something (creates the initial content), 10% participate (adding to the pile) and everyone else just lurks (reads). I lurk at MySpace, I lurk at TagWorld, I lurk at Yahoo Groups…but I have never wanted to become the 1% or 10% (for the most part) at these places. Maybe something will come in podcasting where I could be the 1% or 10%.

As Yahoo! has been gobbling up many social media sites over the past year (Flickr, upcoming, del.icio.us) I often get asked about how (or whether) we believe these communities will scale.

As an example take Yahoo! Groups.

* 1% of the user population might start a group (or a thread within a group)
* 10% of the user population might participate actively, and actually author content whether starting a thread or responding to a thread-in-progress
* 100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups (lurkers)

There are a couple of interesting points worth noting. The first is that we don’t need to convert 100% of the audience into “active” participants to have a thriving product that benefits tens of millions of users. In fact, there are many reasons why you wouldn’t want to do this. The hurdles that users cross as they transition from lurkers to synthesizers to creators are also filters that can eliminate noise from signal. Another point is that the levels of the pyramid are containing – the creators are also consumers.

Elatable » Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers

Everyone Send Me $5 : TechCrunch

Posted on by theFerf

In a world where everyone is connected, and content is created and shared between PEOPLE everywhere (ie, not propoganda and marketing from companies), instantly, I think this new company, TextPayMe has a true market. Imagine if you will a completelly cash free society where someone finds something of yours they love (on the street or on craigslist.org), asks you how much, you agree on a price and then they pay you via SMS! No change in your pocket, you always know exactly how much money you have, etc. Anyway, here is a blurb about them from TechCrunch.com…

TextPayMe is coming out of beta on a SMS payment service (U.S. only) that allows anyone to send money to anyone else via cell phone. You simply sms the payment to another phone number.

For example, to send $15.27 to a friend with mobile number (206) 555-1234, you would text “PAY 15.27 2065551234″ to [email protected].

The service is currently free, and they are giving every new user $5 to sign up (this really reminds me of the early days with paypal, where they also gave $5 for every new signup and you could beam payments between Palm Pilots).

Your TextPayMe account can be tied to your bank account for moving money into and out of the virtual account. You can also give TextPayMe your credit card for “overdraft” payments.

It looks like they will eventually charge for transactions, but the service is free for now.

>> TechCrunch Everyone Send Me $5
>> Visit TextPayMe.com and Send me Money!

Edgeio Edges Toward Launch

Posted on by theFerf

Another great idea will be opening its Web 2.0 doors soon in the form of classified items and blogging. This new service, Edgeio, will allow you to post the classified ads to your blog (much like people do at craigslist or ebay) and tag the post as “listing”. This will get picked up by the Edgeio system and the people that browse that system can find the products they are looking for. I think the concept is ingenious and I may just have to start researching more uses for tag specific uses myself.

The way Edgeio works is that bloggers would post items they want to sell right on their blogs, tagging them with the word “listing” (and eventually other descriptive tags). Then, Edgeio will pluck them as it constantly crawls millions of blogs looking for the “listing” tag and index them on Edgeio.com.

Also, Edgeio sends a trackback to the blog, providing a way for the blogger to go to Edgeio and modify the listing, adding other tags such as “autos” and other data that will further help the listing appeal to potential buyers.

Full Story from BusinessWeek.com